


Rush to the Start.

by CountlessUntruths (KaliCephirot)



Category: Half Life Trilogy - Sally Green
Genre: Fix-It, Fuck you canon, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-04
Updated: 2016-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-31 04:38:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6456193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaliCephirot/pseuds/CountlessUntruths
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fix it ficlets, scenes and missing things for Half Lost. Chock full of spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> OKAY SO. This is going to require writer notes.
> 
> I didn't like Half Lost. At All. Yes, the part that angered me the most was the series I had been obsessed for almost two years turning into a Bury Your Gays thing. But there were several things that, even if the Bury Your Gays hadn't happened, would still have left me deeply unsatisfied.
> 
> So this is basically why this collection-of-fics-is. I am entirely too angry with this series to attempt to do a proper, whole rewrite thing. But I still want to add these fix it that would have made it, to ME, a better, more satisfying read. I'm not sure how many of these I'll do, up until I ran out of salt, I guess.
> 
> And that is all. If you liked the book, good for you, you can keep it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Donna-is-actually-Jessica. There, boom, you then have a character who wasn't supposed to be the Big Bad met her end with relevance to the story.

_//"Ok. What shall I talk about? Do you want me to tell you what happened?"_  
I nod.  
"Was that a nod or a shake of the head?"  
"Nod."//

It takes Gabriel a few moments and I glance at him. I still can't move my head to look at him, but he shifts closer so I don't have to do so. Then he sighs.

"Donna was Jessica."

_What._

My surprise must be obvious. Gabriel takes my hand again, our fingers interlocked and he squeezes, probably trying to calm me.

Gabriel talks about how Celia supposes that it was a double set up, how they'd either kill me or capture me at the camp, or I'd take 'Donna' with us, ready to gain our trust. How much Jessica must have prepared herself to be able to fight Truth Potions, how Van had pondered that maybe she had even taken some unknown potion to strengthen her resolve.

But I'm still thinking... Donna touched me. Donna squeezed my hands and smiled at me and... I liked her. Liked her well enough. I thought she was gutsy.

"I thought that with the scar the Fairborn left, even her Gift wouldn't be able to hide it."

"It can," in front of my eyes, Gabriel's face shifts-- not much, just a little, so that the inch-of-scar I left on his eyebrow disappears, his face completely flawless, no scars whatsoever. "But I'd have to do it all the time. And it's tiring, having to stay like that all the time."

His face shifts again back to not-as-perfect-because-of-me. Then, as if he hated having to admit this. "Her Gift was very strong."

I close my eyes. I feel Gabriel's fingers combing through my hair, slowly.

"Should I stop?"

I mouth a simple _'no'_ at him, too tired to try and get my voice to work again, still too shocked my what Gabriel is telling me. I manage to open my eyes when he teases me about how it's an improvement, having me listening and staying still and not cursing up a storm. I try to frown or stick my tongue, but I barely manage to give a soft squeeze to his fingers.

"Fine. So... she shot you, it really didn't matter where she did so, just that she got you. The bullet is different, it has some sort of spell. It was moving towards your heart, spreading poison as it did. Nesbitt says she tried to shoot again but... I was a bit distracted."

I think of him, pressing his hand to my stomach to hold in the blood, telling me that I was going to be okay. I think of how scared I had been with the vision, that maybe Gabriel would betray me.

"So, things went a bit hectic then. Nesbitt got shot. Normal Hunter bullet, and he's okay, except he'll want to tell you how he took a bullet for you. Then Adele used her Gift to protect Nesbitt and she shot her."

I look at Gabriel, waiting for him to say what I know comes next, but needing to hear it anyway.

"Adele killed her."

"Good," I say, and I don't feel sorry at all.

But then I think about Arran's exhausted eyes, his pale, sleep-deprived face. Jessica was terrible to me, and that made it so that Deborah and Arran always tried to protect me: a lot of the times I didn't tell them the things Jessica did to me, because then Jessica would turn against them and hurt them. When Arran and I were little, when Deborah was our older sister, she often had scrapped knees from Jessica pushing her to the ground for trying to protect me, often had to tape her glasses back together after Jessica had broken them because Deborah had been reading us a bedtime story. Jessica never forgave any alliances towards me, not even from our siblings. Once Arran grew up and he started protecting me and Deborah, Jessica often slapped him.

(But I can't stop myself from remembering Annalise after I told her about Kieran. Crying because he was still her brother, even after everything he'd done.

Does Arran feel the same?)

"Nathan? Are you still awake?"

"Yes," I manage to croak, but I don't open my eyes.

"Okay. Almost done," and he tells me how Celia saved my life - which, frankly, she owed me, all things considered - and how Arran started working on an antidote with Ellen's help, from some of the things that they'd left from Van, and about the poison, but I can't make any sense of it, I am so tired.

"You need to sleep," Gabriel says softly, his fingers still carding through my hair. And I think about the line of Hunters waiting inside my dream, how now I know that Jessica is gone and it only means I have half of the world to kill, bang bang bang.

The scar in my stomach burns. "Don't want to," I manage to murmur. "Bad dreams."

Gabriel squeezes my hand. "I'll wake you up, if they start again."

I open my eyes to say thank you, but he's looking at me, his eyes full of tears.

"... sleep with me?"

And I didn't really mean to make that a question. Gabriel still nods, 'tho, and he shifts to sleep by my side, and I think I remember this, remember his breathing against my neck, his warmth keeping the cold of the cell away, and this time, when I sleep, I don't dream at all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set between 'tired' and 'I want it to be true'. Ellen doesn't die an off-scene-death and actually has a consequence as someone of relevance in Nathan's life.

"You look terrible, Ivan."

Even though I'm still exhausted, I can't help but smile. Somehow, Ellen always manages that, to make me smile.

"Your face is terrible, Nikita," I murmur, but when I open my eyes I see that it's actually true enough. Ellen looks so tired, shadows deep as bruises under her eyes, her eyes rimshot red. But she smiles at him, even though she looks like she could probably sleep for a week.

"Well, we can't all be as pretty as Gabriel," she says, and I snort.

Ellen moves closer, carefully, and I wonder if the same change happened with me, going from fourteen-to-fifteen in the cage, as the one that she's going through in this war.

Following the cuts, the Hunters found Ellen's home and they murdered her father while he fought against the Hunters to give her a chance to run away. Ellen had run to the only place she had thought of, her grandmother's house, and the woman hadn't helped her much except given her some money and had used her Gift - to make cuts - to help Ellen run away from England and to Germany, the only place Ellen could think to go to try and find someone of the Allicance, in the only act of family love her grandmother had ever shown her. It had taken Ellen weeks before she was able to find us again.

"Didn't know if you had made it," I say. I know Gabriel told me, but I meant, before. After we found Van's body, found everyone dead, I thought...

Ellen gives a small shrug. "Van gave me a camouflage potion, told me not to move and distracted them. I guess it's just not my time, huh?"

Van took an interest in Ellen early on, saying that she seemed to have good instincts about potions, that it was quite likely that her gift would be related to potion making. One of the first things Van did was find the vial with the blood that belonged to Ellen's mom and had given it to her, to keep safe. Nesbitt did tell us, once, that Van wants to keep Ellen as her student.

And then the grief hits me again. I'm still thinking of Van in present tense. I still expect to smell her cigarrettes, to hear her rough voice congratulating me for somehow beating odds and surviving again.

And I realize that it's not going to happen again and it hurts. It hurts just like I'm never going to have Deborah's gentle voice reading out loud while I draw, just how I won't get Gran making some 'nice and relaxing tea, so maybe you'll be nice and relaxed for a little while, mmm?' while trying to comb my hair.

"Nathan?"

I open my eyes again, shrug a little. Ellen gives a small, still-kinda-dimpled smile, her pretty ocean eyes looking at me, the quiet between us comfortable and easy.

"I want to ask you to do something for me," Ellen says, quiet and serious, unlike her. Ellen is always very brave, and while she does take things seriously, more than a fourteen years old kid should, she usually doesn't show it like this. I nod, waiting for her to speak.

"I'm already fifteen. Fifteen and a seven months. And I know that seventeen months is a lot of time to go through, but..." she says. "Nathan, if... if we manage to survive this war up until my seventeen birthday..."

And I think that I know where she's going. She's going to invite me to her Giving, and I'm deeply touched by that already, and even knowing it's so far away it's a good thing, it sets a goal, kind of, something to look after. To make sure that there's an after. But then Ellen takes a slow deep breath and looks at me, her amazing ocean-like eyes shimmering.

"Would you do my Giving?"

And I've forgotten how to breathe, sure that I didn't hear well, that I didn't-- that she didn't--

"At this point, you're the closest thing I have for a family now. And... it'd mean a lot. If you were the one to give me three gifts, helped me with my mum's blood."

I try to speak, say anything at all but I'm shit at words in a good day, and my brain feels muddled and I'm surprised and shocked and it takes me too long. Ellen blushes, frowning a bit before she tries to wave it all away.

"Don't worry, it was just a silly idea, forget about it?"

I gather as much strength as I have to catch her hand. I wish I had enough to sit up, but even just doing that exhausted me. But I hold her hand and squeeze it gently.

"Ellen. I'd be honored."

And then she launches herself at me - which, ouch - and hugs me tightly. I try but I can't move my arms, still too tired, but my heart feels both heavy and light in a way I'm not used to. I panic a little, however, when I hear Ellen give a small 'sniff'.

"Does this mean I'm your older brother now?" I ask, trying to joke, but I'm terrible at jokes and it comes out too serious, too real.

Ellen gives a small, teary giggle, pressing her face against my shoulder.

"An older, kind-of-an-idiot older brother, maybe!"

I snort and say nothing at all, just let her calm down and grieve and do whatever she feels she needs to, because, with her words, Ellen suddenly isn't the only one who needs to calm down, who might just cry a little.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY this isn't about Half Lost. But while discussing Half Lost salt and takling with [cutenegativitycloud](http://cutenegativitycloud.tumblr.com/post/142367651293/countlessuntruths-cutenegativitycloud), she mentioned how Deb should've been the leader of the Alliance and I could think of nothing else through the day.
> 
> And since this is my recollection of salt regarding Half Bad, even if its mostly directed towards Half Lost, I thought I should just put it here.
> 
> Set in Half Wild, just before the meeting with Isch, when Nathan recognizes the person talking. It's not Celia this time.
> 
> TW: Abuse, suicide, torture, imprisionment.

But I recognize the voice. I open the door and walk inside, ignoring Gabriel's questions because I'm pretty sure I'm finally going mad.

In my head, her hair is still waist-long and in a thick yellow braid, wearing her school uniform with the socks always falling down her ankles, her glasses slipping down her nose. Deborah always ended with a smudge of EVERYTHING on her nose for constantly pushing her broken, always taped together, glasses to their place: dirt, flour, ink. 

Her hair is very short now, probably shorter than mine. She's wearing dark jeans and a sweater, her glasses without any tape on them, her eyes hazel with silver shards in them. She's thinner than before, her face sharper, and she looks almost exactly like the pictures I've seen of mum. 

And when she sees me she stops talking with Van, her hands flying to her mouth. She's crying before she says anything and then she only murmurs my name. We find each other in the middle and I hug my older sister as tight as I can and she hugs me back.

Last time I saw her, we were almost the same height: she still was a little taller than me, not much, about ten centimeters taller, probably. Now I've got a little more than those ten centimeters on her and I press my face against her shoulder and Deborah's shoulders shake as she cries.

We pull apart a little and her hands are on my face. "Oh god, what did they do with my little brother? You used to be cute!"

I guffaw. I hear Gabriel try to disguise his laughter as a cough. "I was never cute!"

"I have pictures to prove it," Deborah deadpans, before turning to look a little towards Gabriel. "I have no problems to show them later if anyone fancies it."

"That sounds delightful," Gabriel beams at Deborah and I glare at him.

"Fuck off, wanker," and Deborah shushes me for my language and the sheer normalcy of it all makes me ditzy. "I don't get it, why didn't Van want me to see you?"

"It was me you weren't supposed to see just yet, I believe."

And if Deborah's voice was a balm, this one rises every hair in my body, my breathing quickening until, for a second, I can breathe. Because I also know that voice. I heard it every single fucking day for over two years. Before every punch, every order, every time I was hurt.

My guardian and teacher, Celia, still as plain looking and ugly as before, wearing her uniform, looking at me with the same fucking calm and pleasant expression she always did. I never even saw her get mad, not when I yelled, not when she'd beat me to a bloody pulp, as if I was not worthy of any of that.

I hear Deborah call my name and I realize-- Gabriel is here, and Deborah are here with me. Is Celia here to capture me again? I dread the awful noise her Gift is, I dread the idea of being hurt again. And then I worry because, worse than me being hurt, is Deborah being hurt, Gabriel being hurt. Like hell I'm going to let her, I think, like hell I'm going to--

( _\--shouting yourself hoarse in that cage the first few days and not being unable to go out, 6 x 6 feet of a cage where you couldn't walk could do nothing, after the first winter where you almost lost your fingers to frostbite and she got you those sheepskins and you were even fucking grateful that she hadn't allowed you to die of that and the broken bones and broken bones and broken bones and wanting to go back home so much it was like being constantly sick, always sick--_ )

I can feel the animal and I can almost feel the change and I don't know if I'll be able to stop at all.

"Nathan!" Deborah stands in front of me and puts her hands on my face again, pulling my face towards her so that she can press her forehead against mine. "Breathe. Calm down. I'll explain everything. Just breathe, Nathan. Calm down. You don't want to hurt us. She won't hurt you. I won't let her."

And I both want to cry and laugh at that. Cry because I remember when Arran and I were real little, how Deborah would stand up before Jessica, so Jessica wouldn't hurt me. Laugh because Deborah is probably a little taller than five feet, maybe. Celia towers over her. 

I see her smile with that. "Hey, I'm tougher than you know."

"If Nathan won't work with Celia, Deborah, then this is never going to work," Van says, blowing smoke (a literal one, maybe a metaphorical one as well) as she looks towards my sister and me.

And then I turn to look towards Deborah, because there is no fucking way that Van means what I think she means.

Deborah looks at me, her eyes calm.

"Celia's here because I brought her here, Nathan. She's part of the Alliance."

"What?!" And I'm ready to scream my rage again, because this has got to be a bloody nightmare and I want to wake up, now.

And then Celia gets closer, stretching a hand and--

( _\--chockfull on the floor, can't breathe, can't breathe, can't breathe, five more seconds and Celia will have a dead Half Code, haha, wouldn't that be nice and then you realize that and you try to blow off any resting air you've got because maybe you can escape maybe this is it and you want so so bad for things to be over and--_ )

I take a step backwards, Deborah takes a step forwards, in front of me. And then, at the same time.

"Don't touch him!"

"Don't touch me!"

And my five foot-and-something-one-hundred-pounds-soaking-wet-older-sister steps in front of the giant that is Celia.

"We have talked about this. You are not to touch my brother ever again."

"I never hated him, Deborah. I still don't."

"No, but you never cared either," Deborah says and there's ice in her voice that I rarely heard before. When she talked about what she had heard the O'Brien say, when she talked about the Council before Gran would shush her. "I will only say this once again. You are not to touch my brother, Celia. You are not to be in the same room with him without supervision. Is that clear?"

To my surprise, Celia nods and steps back. Deborah turns towards me and somehow she's my sister again, not this woman who can give orders to fucking Hunters. She smiles a little. "Come with me?"

I nod, still dumbfounded. A handsome, dark skinned man approaches Deborah as we're walking towards a door to the side, touching her shoulder gently and Deborah smiles at him. His dark eyes have the silver glints of a White Witch, and he gives me a small smile and a nod that I don't return, just look at him curiously for a few seconds.

The room Deborah leads us to is tiny and cluttered with stuff: boxes, a board with several maps and papers pinned to it. I get the chchchchchch of two working laptops and the first thing she does is turn them off and open the windows for more air and light. 

"We're only here for this meeting, it's still too close to England. We're moving towards Germany for now, probably set up camp."

"Deborah, what just happened?"

She smiles at me and goes to sit towards the bed, crossing her legs on top of it. It's a gesture so familiar that I can't help but think of thousands of afternoons when we'd all hole up on Arran and mine old bedroom, me drawing, Arran doing his homework, Deborah already done with hers and rereading an old book. Sometimes she'd read out loud, if it was something she thought I would enjoy. 

She pats the bed and I sit down on it. 

"Should I start when they took you and Gran? Or the Alliance?"

"Gran," I say.

So she tells me how they found out because Jessica said she was going to have Arran's Giving, how Gran and I had been called for the Council. How Arran got angry, said he'd rather die than have Jessica do his Giving and sent her out.

"So I did it," Deborah says. "Three gifts for one gift. And then we waited."

And they had to wait for almost a week before Soul released our grandmother, who by then was thinner than she ever was, and hearbroken. And how she and Arran asked and asked and asked and didn't get any information up until Gran had told them that they had to forget me. 

"She loved you," Deborah reassures me. "So much. But she was afraid..."

"That they might kill you and Arran, I know," I say, and the grief for Gran is there again, eating at my chest. 

Deborah moves closer until she's by my side, tells me about Gran's death and how Arran and she tried so hard to think of something to save me, and it was when she discovered her Gift that Deborah thought how they could find me.

"What is your Gift?" I ask and fuck manners. "Arran said it was very unique?"

Deborah pauses and then looks at me, dead serious.

"If I tell you, you absolutely _can't_ say that it explains my good grades. I studied hard for those!"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

Deborah glares at me for a moment, playfully, before she shrugs one shoulder.

"I've got photographic memory. Anything I read, even just skimmed, I'll be able to reproduce it word by word and transcribe it."

Which is so unbelievable her that I snort a laugh. "But that _does_ explain your grades!"

"Shut up, no it doesn't," but she's smiling for a moment before she keeps on. "But I knew they wouldn't just let me waltz inside the Council. So I had to start telling Jessica that time had made me think things through, that we were better without you... I never thought that, Nathan, I promise. But--"

"It's fine," I tell her. "You did it to help me, I know, Debs."

There's guilt in her expression before she continues telling me how she and Arran had figured that once that she found out where I was, they could try to go and save me, and then run away, so she kept on until even Jessica was conveinced and helped her get a job at the Council, saying that her Gift was for organization or otherwise they would never let her approach any important document. She had met David already and he didn't support the Council extremism at all, and mentioned that he had family in Brussels they could go for and then disappear. 

"How were you going to go through Celia, if you found me?"

"Well, we were still working around that little detail," she handwaves it and I love her so much for that I take her hand and squeeze it. She squeezes my hand back and doesn't let go.

And then she says how, little by little, she got around reading all the terrible things the Council was doing, how long they had shifted Retribution - White Witches don't know it's thirty days of torture - and she became more and more horrified and how she got angrier and angrier and realized that it wasn't just abotu saving me, which was something that she had been thinking since I had been born. So she started toying with this idea of a way to stop the White Council.

"But I didn't have many allies and I didn't know who to get," she says. "Then I remembered mum's journals."

"Mum had journals?" I gasp. "Why didn't I know of them?"

"No-one did. Gran had them hidden in her closet. After she died, when Arran and I were cleaning, I found them hidden behind a loose board on the floor. I think that Gran meant to destroy them, one of them had burn marks, but I think she couldn't dare to destroy her daughter's last remaining thoughts. I... I did destroy them, Nathan, after reading them. To be safe."

I nod a little, even though it hurts. I can't remember my mother at all, she killed herself when I was about a year old. I know I wouldn't have been able to read her diaries, but I'd have touched something of hers, I'd have seen her writing, even if to me it'd be just scribbles. It's ridiculous how much the idea of them being destroyed hurts.

"I saved something, just in case we ever saw each other again," Deborah reaches for the bedtable and takes out a folder which she gives me. I don't know what I'm expecting, but I gasp when I see some old, yellowed drawings that my father must have made. A messy, scrawly 'M' is signed on the left corner of each of them. There are some flowers, some animals. A picture of my mum when she was probably around my age, freckles on her nose. I breathe in slowly, and Deborah presses her side against mine as she talks again.

She tells me how mum had grown to hate the Council and what it represented, how she had decided to leave Dean, Arran and Debs' dad, and she talks about meeting a Black Witch named Victoria who would be able to help her get away.

"What, you mean _Van_?" I gasp. Van looks around twenty five, probably, and while she has admitted that she's older than she looks, knowing that she's probably older than my parents is a lot. My mother would turn fifty soon. 

"Mmhmm. And then I had to search for references in the Archives. That took a while. But I learned a lot," Deborah shrugs a little. "That was in January this year. David helped me find Van and we started talking, carefully. By then Soul was already spreading his Hunters, and each time more and more Witches were being murdered. Van agreed with me that something needed to be done and we started planning the Alliance. Then, in April, you escaped."

She tells me how relieved she and Arran were, how they tripled the vigilance she and Arran were always under, but how she still managed to start working on a general idea with Van, up until June, when she found out about an Hunter's chase in Swiss that had the Council stretched thin. A little after that, she learned what Soul had made to Celia's family so she reached for her, wanting to see where Celia's loyalty laid over and once she was satisfied with that, and with advice from Van, she added her to the Alliance. She and David waited a few more weeks before arranging to go on vacations with his family in Brussels, and how instead they got fake papels, pretended to be Fains, got into a ship to go the Portugal, and there they backpacked their way to Spain.

"We only got here about two weeks ago, and I've been rewriting everything I learned from the Council. David has been getting in touch with people he knew from College, some Fains in the know and Half Bloods and the like. He used to be part of a protest group until his dad got sick and he couldn't risk jail. His Gift is being charming. He's got a lot of charisma. When he uses it, you want to listen to him. It's not mind control or anything like that, but you can't help but pay attention to him. Doesn't hurt that he's very handsome, of course, although that friend of yours certainly gives him a run for his money, I'd say."

And I know Deborah is doing this to calm me, to make me smile, but I'm still shaking a little.

"So Celia is part of the Alliance? With you?"

Deborah sighs and she squeezes my hand again. I feel it ice cold, even though the palm is sweating.

"She is going to be judged as a war criminal, Nathan," Deborah says. "It's the very first thing I told her. All Hunters who have done Retribution will do so. No death penalty if the give up themselves, but there'll be a trial for all Hunters and every member of the White Witches Council. But... we need her, Nathan. We need someone with military experience and who knows more about how they work than I do."

"You don't know what she can do, Debs," I murmur. 

"I know enough," she says, squeezing my hand, and there's something in her voice that... the reports that Celia sent. Did she ever found those? Did my sister get to read about the things they did to me? About how I tried to kill myself? I feel sick at the idea. Deborah carries on, her hand still holding mine. "And if you ever want to tell me, you can. I've not forgiven her, Nathan. I never will. Neither will Arran. But right now we need her, alright?"

And I hate that it makes sense and I want to get angry at her and I think I am, a little, but mostly I am still so glad that she's there. That my older sister still has my back. 

I swallow the thickness around my throat and cough a bit. I can trust her. I can trust her and Arran and Gabriel and Annalise. Even if I can't trust in anyone else, I can trust them. So I give a small nod and Deborah murmurs a 'thank you' before she leans her head against my shoulder and I lean my head against hers and just breathe for a moment, thinking of all the times we did this, every time I'd come back from one of the Council's meetings, how Arran would hug me and Deborah would cuddle me and I almost want to cry again, because I am a crybaby, obviously.

"So," I say, before I actually cry again. "Was that man we passed by David?"

"What?" I can't help but grin when she blushes. "Um. Yes. Yes he is. "

It's easier to grin a little more then. 

"Well, then, tell me about him, before I go and ask him what his intentions with my older sister are, can't just let you be with someone if he might just be a wanker," I ask, and she nudges me with her shoulder, but she starts speaking about when and where she met her husband and how she fell in love and for a moment or two, we're just two siblings who haven't seen each other in a long time catching up and the rest of the world can fuck itself for all I care.


End file.
